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May 28, 2012

THE MAGICIAN KING by Lev Grossman, 2011

The Magicians
was praised as a triumph by readers and critics of both mainstream and fantasy
literature. Now Grossman takes us back to Fillory, where the Brakebills
graduates have fled the sorrows of the mundane world, only to face terrifying
new challenges. Quentin and his friends are now the kings and queens of
Fillory, but the days and nights of royal luxury are starting to pall. After a
morning hunt takes a sinister turn, Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a
magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of
their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are
unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see: his
parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic
that Julia learned on the streets can save them. (Goodreads)

Review by Laura
Madsen

Like (presumably) every other
fantasy geek I’ve thought, Wouldn’t it be cool to do magic? To pop into
Hogsmeade for a butterbeer with Professor Dumbledore? Or maybe use magical
cures when my regular Western medicine fails?

But think about. Like really think
about it. Would you want the surly teenager with his underpants showing because
his pants are down below his hips to be chucking magic missiles at the
substitute teacher? Or the creepy old guy who mows his lawn naked to be scrying
in a pool of used motor oil? Or the entitled chick Facebooking on her smart
phone to be whipping up a pox potion?

Well, er, not really. But
that’s the world that Lev Grossman has created. If you’re smart enough and
dedicated enough, and possibly do enough drugs, you too can do magic.

Like Grossman’s previous
novel, THE MAGICIANS, this urban fantasy is not for kids. And it’s not a book
to breeze through in an evening; you’ve got to be paying attention. His writing
is intricate (“I was perfectly happy where I was, deliquescing, atom by atom,
amid a riot of luxury”) and full of references to literature, math and physics
(I’ve got a doctorate degree and still didn’t understand many of them). In one
chapter, there are references across the board from Italian carabinieri to
Candy Land to Brythonic languages to Arthurian legend to Google Street View to
Beatrix Potter to “The Wind in the Willows” to Jim Morrison to Scarlett’s Tara
to Christopher Robin. Confused yet?

The prose is by turns
colloquial and elegant. One great passage:

“But nuclear winter was
coming, and magic wasn’t keeping her warm. It was getting cold, tainted snow
was falling, and the earth was getting thirsty again, thirsty for balm. The
black dog was hunting. Julia was feeling it again, the blackness.

“Or really blackness would
have been a relief, blackness would have been a field trip compared with where
she was headed, which was despair. That stuff had no color. She wished it were
made of blackness, velvety soft blackness, that she could curl up and fall
asleep in, but it was so much worse than that. Think of it as the difference
between zero and the empty set, the set that contains nothing, not even
zero. These but the trappings and the suits of woe. All these seem
to laugh,/Compared with me, who am their epitaph.”